


A Qualified Spymaster

by WatchTheAntagonist



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Also Kind of Accidentally, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Badass Martin Blackwood, Badass Sasha James, F/F, F/M, Gertrude Died and Left A Lot of Problems, Guard Captains Basira and Daisy, M/M, Manipulative Elias Bouchard, Political Intrigue, Queen Sasha, Spymaster Martin, They are Qualified At Least, accidentally
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatchTheAntagonist/pseuds/WatchTheAntagonist
Summary: Through a series of misunderstandings and lying about his qualifications, Martin Blackwood has become the least qualified spymaster the kingdom of Panopticon has ever seen. He's managing to hold everything together, until he is tasked with gathering information from the representative of the Cult of the Ceaseless Watcher, one Jonathon Sims.Sasha hadn't really worried when Gertrude had named her heir. After all, it was just a temporary arrangement to provide some political leverage for Gertrude's negotiations. Until it wasn't, and Sasha is sitting on a throne she never wanted and nobles and foreign cults alike are coming for her blood.Meanwhile, Daisy had thought she had left her past with the Cult of the Hunt far behind her. Until the past comes calling, and she is forced to choose between the Queen she now serves, the woman she has always stood beside, and an old debt that needs to be repaid.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fantasy/Royalty AU time! I've had the first chapter of this sitting in my drafts for ages, but didn't want to post it until I'd actually have time to write some more. Anyways, I'm always grateful for comments, so I hope you enjoy and please tell me what you think!

“I’ll need those reports on my desk by noon tomorrow at the very latest,” Martin commanded, trying to cover the fact that he was once again noticing the oddity of him commanding anyone, much less an elite spy force of Panopticon, one of the most prosperous kingdoms in the land.

“Yes, sir,” the assembled group chorused. Marin admirably resisted the urge to look behind him to see who they were addressing.

“Dismissed,” he said. The people, _his_ people, turned and filed out of his office. Martin began tidying up the papers strewn across the enormous desk, doing his best to seem busy in case any of them spared a glance back.

“Sir?” a voice said tentatively. Martin looked up, recognizing Georgie’s voice, mentally tallying everything he knew about her. Hard worker, dedicated. Always filled out her paperwork and handed it in on time. Hell if he knew if it was done correctly or not, but it always looked neat. Definitely smart enough that there was a chance that she was on to him. The whole team was smart, of course, they had been hand-picked by Sasha back when she ran the task force, before Queen Gertrude had declared her heir and promptly died of a heart attack. The only reason he hadn’t been found out was that, among the many skills he claimed to have, lying was one he actually did excel at.

“What do you need?” Martin said, making his voice sound curt and efficient, as if he had much better things to do that he definitely knew how to do.

“Just wanted to know how I should proceed with the Ghost investigation. I know you put me in charge of that task force, but I figured that you would want to consult with me before I make large decisions for my team.” The fact that that was the way that Sasha had run things went unspoken between them.

“I trust your judgement,” Martin said, complete with a flippant gesture that indicated that her task force was below his attention. He instantly felt bad about it, but there was no way he could fake his way through that conversation.

“Understood. I will take my leave,” Georgie said. Martin nodded his permission and she turned and left. He let out a long sigh. One crisis averted, now on to the next.

As if summoned by his thoughts, the door to his office swung open and in walked Tim, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, followed by Daisy, Captain of the Queen’s Guard. He smiled at them genuinely. There was something of an unspoken comradery between most of Sasha’s court, born of a bunch of rushed promotions as the majority of Gertrude’s heads of departments either died or mysteriously disappeared around the same time she did. At least Martin wasn’t the only one feeling in over his head. Though, both Daisy and Basira were scarily competent, so it might be just him and Tim. And at least Tim had real qualifications and experience. . .

“What can I do for you two today?” Martin said quickly to cut off his increasingly panicked train of thought.

“What, we can’t come by just to say hi to our favorite coworker?” Tim leans against Martin’s desk, casual but still careful not to crease his elaborate wardrobe, with an easy smile that Martin was quick to return.

“If you were planning on dropping by you should have let me know; I would have put the kettle on for you.” 

“You know you have people who can make you tea.”

“I know,” Martin said, hopefully concealing the embarrassed flush that might have given away the fact that he did in fact kept forgetting that. “I just like to do it myself.”

“Well, it’s probably good that you are staying in practice. You are a ‘servant’ after all,” Tim said with a wink. And there it was. The root of at least a good portion of his _many_ problems. It is an open secret to those in the Castle Panopticon that the castle’s elite spy force was referred to as servants. An open secret to anyone except those new in town applying for any job they think might take them. And so, Martin thought, hey, I know how to fold clothes and wash dishes, I could probably be a servant at the castle. And, somehow, nowhere in the hiring process had anyone figured out the misunderstanding. And, somehow, Martin had become a spy. And had somehow gotten promoted. And all of his superiors had died or vanished or, in Sasha’s case, become Queen. And thus, Martin had become head of the Panopticon’s spy force. He used to work on a _farm_.

“Yeah, hah,” Martin said, realizing that he needed to respond somehow.

“Her Majesty wants to see you,” Daisy said, standing tall and very intimidating in her polished but clearly well-used armor. Because of course this couldn’t just be a social visit.

“What’s going on?” Martin said, trying to maintain a clear balance between professionalism and concern in his tone.

“I don’t know the details. Something about a treaty that Gertrude made with one of the cults before she died,” Daisy said. Martin glanced at Tim to see if he had any additional information.

“Basira’s been handling the stuff with the Cults. Daisy and I have our hands full between the Ghost investigation and the pressure from the Lukases and Fairchilds. God, I had no idea how much of this bullshit Gertrude stopped just by being Gertrude. No one would have tried to start this sort of shit with her.” For the first time, Martin noticed the dark circles under Tim’s eyes. It looked like he wasn’t the only one struggling. He winced. Having an incompetent spymaster probably wasn’t helping any of their issues.

“I have someone working on the Ghost issue from my end,” Martin said, hoping to alleviate a little bit of that pressure. The moment he said it, he knew he had done something wrong.

“Georgie. I know. She said you told her to report her findings to me,” Daisy said, giving him an odd look.

“Yes, I did that,” Martin said, hating how obvious he must seem. At least Georgie knew what she was doing. “Sorry, been a long day.”

“Yeah, and it’s only going to get longer,” Tim said with a sigh, seeming to take his excuse on surface value. Daisy was still looking at him like a wolf eying a particularly stupid rabbit, but that was kind of her default, so he didn’t think he had to be too worried. “Anyways, we thought we’d stop by since we were passing this way anyways and deliver your summons in person. Finish up whatever you are working on and head over, she wants to talk with you as soon as she can.”

Martin says a quick goodbye to Tim and Daisy, pretending to understand the very important work they mentioned to him. He made up his mind to wait at least fifteen minutes before going to see the Queen so that it at least appeared that he had been working on something he needed time to finish up. He made himself another cup of tea.

After what he felt was probably an appropriate amount of time, he went to go see Sasha. Her Majesty, the Queen, he reminded himself. That wouldn’t be a good thing to get mixed up. He smiled at and exchanged polite small talk with the two guards stationed outside her door, being sure to ask after the one’s kids and the other’s latest attempt to ask out her crush, and they opened the door to let him in.

It wasn’t the formal receiving room, but instead one of the small bedchambers that Sasha had converted into a study after Martin had taken over her old rooms. Papers, books filled with bookmarks, and ancient looking scrolls were spread out on every available surface. Martin didn’t even see Sasha at first until she stood up and her head peaked out over the giant pile of books on her desk.

“Martin, good, you’re here,” she said, making her way gingerly across the floor.

“Your Majesty,” Martin said with a deep bow. He politely pretended not to notice her wince at the title.

“How are things going with the Ghost investigation? Her troops attacked another one of our bases last night. Made off with a bunch of supplies,” Sasha sounded distracted.

“Investigations are proceeding. I have my best people on the task,” Martin said. That, at least, was the truth. Whether they were proceeding well or poorly he couldn’t tell, but it seemed like something was proceeding at least.

“Good, good.” Sasha ran her hand through her hair, trying to get the unruly strands out of her eyes.

“Was there anything else you needed from me, Your Majesty?” Martin asked politely.

“Yes,” Sasha said with a sigh. “What do you know about the Cult of the Ceaseless Watcher?”

“I thought Captain Basira was handling all of the negotiations with the Cults?” Martin said, then suppressed a wince. Could he have made his incompetence any more obvious?

“Yes. But we need your assistance with this,” Sasha said. Her tone was curt, but her eyes softened. “I know you must already be swamped. Between the Ghost, and the Lucas task force, and now this stuff with the Fairchilds. . . I really hate to put even more on your plate. But this is important.”

“What do you need me to do?” Asking for orders instead of offering help or advice? Possible, but no one could prove it.

“Gertrude had a lot of plans before she died. She had all sorts of dealings with the different cults, and a lot of the negotiations that she did were not ones that she shared with the rest of us. Or explained her reasonings for even if she did tell us they were happening. I’m trying to go through all of her papers and figure out what she had planned, but it’s slow going. Then I got this.” Sasha handed him a letter. Martin glanced at it, noting it’s address to a “dear Archivist,” an ancient title for the Monarch of the Panopticon. And the sign off, from “Your eternal friend, Elias,” before he read the contents.

“An Envoy from the Cult of the Ceaseless Watcher coming to our court?” he questioned aloud as he read.

“Yes. Apparently, he’s arriving tomorrow.”

“Any idea what his intentions are?”

“A member of the nosiest cult? Can’t be anything good.”

“Right. So, what’s the plan?”

“I want one of your agents with him at all times. It’ll be a courtesy, a personal manservant provided by the Castle Panopticon for the duration for his stay. They’ll stay with him, try to figure out his motivations, and hopefully stop him from doing anything that will fuck us over too badly,” Sasha said.

“Most of my best operatives are already out on assignment,” Martin said, an idea appearing half-formed in the back of his mind.

“I know. And I don’t want to have to take away any manpower from ongoing investigations,” Sasha sighed.

“But this is close to home. We can’t afford to have them wandering around unsupervised,” Martin finished her thought for her. “There’s really only one option I can think of to make this work.”

“What is it?” Sasha said. She looked as eager for a miracle fix as Martin was to provide one, both for her and for himself.

“I’m the best option here. The only option.” Martin could see it playing out already. He had come to the castle prepared with the skills needed to be a servant. He could do that. He could follow around one person much easier than he could organize an entire spy force. “I’ll have my next in command pick up my duties. She’s efficient but wouldn’t be suited to field work. This is our best option.”

He didn’t have to do much convincing. Sasha was already nodding along, pressing him for a couple details on what the spy force would need to continue on with him spending more time away. He tried his best to make sure the truthful answer of ‘not much’ would sound a little less like he was spending all his time alphabetizing old files and making tea. Most of the task forces had been forced to become self-sufficient after Martin’s unexpected promotion.

“Do we know anything else about this envoy?” Martin asked. He realized belatedly that that was the sort of question that a proper spy would have asked as something other than an afterthought.

“Just his name. I found it in one of Gertrude’s old communications with Elias.” Sasha shuffled through a leaning pile of papers until she found the document she wanted. “Jonathon Sims.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I make myself sad writing about Tim and Sasha? Perhaps.

Sasha didn’t sigh after Martin left, but she did allow herself a quick, quiet exhale. She closed her eyes for just a moment. Another crisis dealt with, at least for today. She couldn’t say that she loved Martin’s plan to take the job himself, but she also couldn’t think of any better way to deal with the situation. And she trusted Martin’s word that the spy force “servants” would continue business as usual in his absence. She had tried to keep herself as far away from the running of her old department as possible since her unexpected ascension to royalty so as not to usurp Martin’s authority, and it seemed as if he had worked to make each task force primarily self-sufficient. She tried not to take it as a dig on her own leadership still, which her allies called “hands-on” and her detractors called “nosy.”

Well, one crisis dealt with and on to the next. Sasha continued her search through Gertrude’s old papers. The files had been left a mess. Sasha kept working, rearranging what she could into some semblance of sense, trying to identify what was important but not urgent, what was “urgent” but not important, what was both, and what was neither. Just as the letters were starting to blur together, the guards at her door—new guards, apparently she hadn’t noticed the shift change—announced a visitor. She immediately sat upright, desperately trying to remember what important meeting she had forgotten, only to see Tim walk through her door with a grin on his face.

“God, it’s good to see you. I was starting to forget that there is a world outside of this mess.” Sasha’s shoulders relaxed at the sight of her friend.

“Are you still working on that?” Tim asked, gesturing at the piles. Sasha grimaced.

“Gertrude’s paperwork is a _mess._ Honestly, it’s so out of character for her, I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.” The Gertrude that Sasha had known had been efficient, organized and had the sharpest mind of anyone Sasha had ever met. Sasha hadn’t been a part of Gertrude’s innermost circle, but she had worked close enough to get what she had thought was a fairly accurate impression of the older woman. “It’s almost as if. . .”

“As if what? If you are starting to believe some conspiracy theory about someone breaking into the castle just to mix around some papers to mildly inconvenience you than you are even more in need of sleep than the bags under your eyes suggest.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re right,” Sasha said. After all, dying had also seemed completely out of character for Gertrude. And yet here they were. Obviously, Sasha hadn’t known her as well as she thought she had.

“Oh! Or she could have been replaced by her evil identical twin sister who didn’t understand filing!”

“Ha ha. You know, if you were half as funny as you think you are, I’d have to hire you as court jester instead of Minister of Foreign Relations.”

“Oh, come on. You love my humor,” Tim said with a wink. Sasha smiled. She knew she was supposed to respond with another dig. Their shared sense of humor had been the foundation of their friendship, after all. But she was so damn tired.

“I do,” she said, softly. She watched Tim’s façade of the trickster slowly fade to match her mood. They had always been on the same wavelength.

“Remind me again why the two of us aren’t just running off together?” he said. He said it with the lilting smile that meant he was kidding. Not about the offer, of course. Just about believing that there was any sort of chance she would take him up on it. They were in too deep now.

“How would I even do with my time without all this paperwork to occupy me?” She asked, half-desperate to bring back the easy joking friendship that had survived her rapid rise in the spy ranks and unexpected promotion

“We could always elope,” he said, with a half-sad smile. Another offer made before, in better times, back when her marrying for love instead of a desperate political alliance might have been in the cards. It had been serious then, and seriously considered. But then they’d both gotten busy with their separate jobs and had some stupid fights about things that didn’t matter, and Tim had stopped bringing it up. They had never officially broken things off, and Sasha at least had always assumed they would resolve their issues. They had time. They had thought they had time.

Sasha knew the response that she was supposed to give. She was supposed to crack some joke, be the dutiful servant of her country. It struck her how much she didn’t want to. She rested her head on her desk, her forearms pushing her glasses into the bridge of her nose.

“What would you even do if I said yes?” she said, too softly for him to hear.

“Is there any word on Gerry?” Tim said, after a too-long silence. Sasha lifted her head, transitioning back to work mode.

“No, and I’m starting to wonder if he’d be any help even if we were able to find out where he went,” she said. “Gertrude must have removing him from the line of succession for a reason, right?”

“I suppose, but she did say that it was just temporary until she could get that thing with the Lukases cleared up. They were pretty pissed at him for something,” Tim said, graciously avoiding another dig at what even Sasha could tell was growing paranoia. It wasn’t her fault that something seemed _wrong_ , but it might be exactly what Tim was saying. Everything about the situation seemed wrong. Gertrude just dropping dead like that. Most of her advisors following suit. Gerry dropping off the face of the map. It was hard to figure out if something little, like the paperwork or Gertrude changing the succession, was actually suspicious when it was hiding behind all the other obviously suspicious things. “Any luck on figuring up what crawled up their asshole?”

Sasha groaned, resisting the urge to facepalm on her desk again.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Tim said. “Yeah, no luck from my end either. I would be starting to think that they might actually not want to talk to me, if I didn’t know that it is impossible for anyone to resist my charms for long.”

“God, can I just have them all executed? I’m queen, right? Could I do that?”

“As hot as I would find it for you to go all evil dictator, starting with one of the most ancient, influential families, who also happen have their own kingdom and armies, probably isn’t the safest bet. No matter how stuck up they are.”

“I hate it when you’re right.”

“There’s a reason you made me an advisor. At least, I’m assuming it wasn’t just for my good looks.”

“Well, not entirely.” Tim chuckled. Sasha rubbed her eyes again. Had there ever been a time that they stayed open of their own volition and not through a monumental display of willpower? There must have been. “And to top off everything else, someone is leaking information to the Ghost. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Fairchilds found something to be pissed at us for just to get in on the fun of driving me totally insane.”

“Thank you.”

“For not having the Fairchilds declaring war yet? Well, you’re welcome, but I still have plenty of time to screw that up—”

“No. For taking the position. For being here,” Sasha said. God, she was feeling sentimental today. Maybe it was the idea of the Watcher representative coming soon. She didn’t think she would be able to say stuff like this if there was a chance that someone else was. . . but that was a problem for later. She would have to figure out how far their powers extend. “I know that this isn’t what you wanted from taking this job. I know you haven’t had much luck tracking down the Stranger, but thank you for staying anyways.”

Tim didn’t speak for a moment. He was probably, like her, remembering how she had gotten him to tell her about his true reason for applying to work at the castle. Maybe he was wondering if knowing his true motivation made her doubt him. It didn’t. Everyone had their own motivations for doing things, and Sasha was still getting over the fact that the other one of Tim’s secret reasons, one that was at least currently overpowering his need for revenge, was his love for her.

“Might as well do something useful until I finally track that bastard down,” Tim said finally.

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything,” Sasha promised, and Tim gave her a grim nod. The two sat in a familiar, companionable silence until another knock came at her door.

“Your Majesty,” a very flustered and out-of-breath Servant said as he rushed in. “The Watcher is here.” Sasha stood up in a flurry of papers and made eye contact with Tim. He nodded, running off to find Martin without another word as Sasha tried desperately to smooth her dress and hair into something presentable. It would be important to make a good impression on one of the most dangerous people alive.


End file.
